Modern wireless communications networks facilitate communication of information wirelessly among a wide range of wireless equipment and mobile users. Typically, information, sometimes called the payload (e.g., media data, text, voice, etc.), is transferred as digital or binary data. Communication of the payload across an air interface (i.e., via a wireless communication link), and corresponding access strategy, can be explained by the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Within the OSI model, a physical link (layer 1) is radio-based and establishes the physical connectivity, sometimes known as the radio link. A data link (layer 2) is transmission protocol-based and establishes logical connectivity. The data link is considered logical, as it is not a physical connection, but uses the physical link for information transmission. A network layer (layer 3), or wireless communication address routing, is implemented across a network of communication equipment and users utilizing various network addressing properties.
Modern wireless communication services typically employ multiple fixed terminals (e.g., base stations, such as cell towers, gateway terminals, etc.), which can provide wireless communication for user terminals, which can be fixed or mobile terminals. For example, mobile equipment users (e.g., mobile stations, or wireless stations) can share wireless communication resources through various multi-access techniques. A mobile terminal typically communicates with the wireless communications network via a base station or other terminal. A base station's geographic location, assigned radio frequency, logical channel parameters, network addressing, and or other parameters can be designed so as to not interfere with other base stations in a geographically similar area. As a mobile terminal moves through the wireless network, the mobile terminal can be assigned to communicate via an appropriate one or more base stations (e.g., as in cellular networks). Some wireless communication services can additionally or alternatively use multi-hop radio links through adjacent equipment users, such as other mobile or fixed terminals that are not base stations (e.g., as in ad-hoc wireless, cognitive radio, or peer-to-peer wireless networks).
Some wireless communications networks are implemented as Local Area Networks (LANs), or Wireless Access Points (WAPs). Such networks can sometimes be referred to as Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) networks, and their base stations can be referred to as Service Set Identifiers (SSID), or Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID). The BSSID is often the Medium Access Control (MAC) address of the WAP, which provides a way of identifying different WAPs. The WiFi standard is detailed in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard 802.11. Another type of wireless communication network is a Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) network, in which base stations are typically referred to as Base Transceiver Stations (BTS). The GSM standard is detailed in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
Establishing, maintaining, and optimizing connectivity within wireless communications networks can be frustrated by a number of complexities. For example, wireless communications networks typically experience constant changes over time in availability and locations of terminals (including base station terminals, user fixed terminals, user mobile terminals, etc.), communication resource availability and demand (e.g., available bandwidth), interference conditions (e.g., from atmospheric conditions, new construction, etc.), and other network conditions. Even where network service providers spend considerable resources attempting to obtain and maintain information regarding these conditions, conventional approaches tend to rely on limited amounts of assumed, and/or rarely measured, data.